Wednesday, 25 July 2012

A pier is a raised structure, including bridge and building supports and walkways, over water, typically supported by widely spread piles or pillars. The lighter structure of a pier allows tides and currents to flow almost unhindered, whereas the more solid foundations of a quay or the closely spaced piles of a wharf can act as a breakwater, and are consequently more liable to silting. Piers can range in size and complexity from a simple lightweight wooden structure to major structures extended over 1600 metres out to sea. In American English, pier may be synonymous with dock.

Piers have been built for several purposes, and because these different purposes have distinct regional variances, the term pier tends to have different nuances of meaning in different parts of the world. Thus in North America and Australia, where many ports were, until recently, built on the multiple pier model, the term tends to imply a current or former cargo-handling facility. In Europe in contrast, where ports more often use basins and river-side quays than piers, the term is principally associated with the image of a Victorian cast iron pleasure pier. However, the earliest piers pre-date the Victorian age.

Tuesday, 3 May 2005

Returning home, I find my parents
rebuilding the house.
The mouth of my childhood is wide open!
and a dentist in a hard hat
is chiselling at my milk teeth.
I take off my metaphors,
wipe my images on the tongue
and walk inside
where my parents are covered in dust -
‘It’s not what it looks like!’
they insist, but I break down
and land in a heap of nostalgia.
Where now, other than the photographs,
will I take refuge from a world
so intent on change?
And where now, more importantly,
will they erect the blue plaque?.

I’ve behaved as badly as I can
today bobbing in and out
of Jacket and coffee and games
of pool that I can never take
seriously and always end up
lampooning with a Buster Keaton
impression usually getting up
on top of the table and putting
rather than potting but I can
honestly say that tomorrow
I too will get a job and become
far more attractive.

A thousand barbecues, ignite!
I’ve never seen this town so alive,
everyone has been spilled.

Here on the Esplanade,
they’re taking off their coats
one at a time -
yes, the coastline is
unzipping.

The new neighbours seize the moment
and wash their car -
they have the cleanest car in England
and I know them now by their wet distorted faces.
They know me better, perhaps
better than anyone,
they’ve seen me dancing through the window.